Like this:

The development company that renovated the Imperial Hotel is in pretty dire straights, which could be very bad news for the people living there.

According to Monday’s AJC, Progressive Redevelopment Inc. is in default on loans for six properties, the largest of which is the 120-unit apartment building at Peachtree and Ivan Allen. It’s scheduled to be sold at auction in January.

“Most of the money to rehabilitate the Imperial — about $8 million — came from low interest loans, tax credits and grants from Atlanta and the state. About $2 million is still owed to the city and the state, most of which will be lost in foreclosure.”

PRI specialized in developing residential properties for low-income residents and more than 1000 families stand to lose their homes because of the defaults, the AJC said.

“The company, ranked by the state as Georgia’s largest nonprofit developer, built or refurbished 38 projects with 4,000 apartments in 21 years, most in metro Atlanta.

PRI and a few partners owe more than $74 million and PRI is in default on at least 10 loans worth $8 million, including $5 million in government-backed loans.”

It’s hard to decide whether to be concerned about the Imperial being sold. Is anyone really just itching to get his hands on a 99-year-old building that would require another renovation and an indeterminate number of years to draw profitable tenants?

It also seems unlikely that neither the state nor the city will step in before the worst happens. Allowing the low-income and formerly homeless residents of that building to be evicted would reflect badly on the state and would do nothing for Atlanta’s reputation as less-than-adept at addressing homelessness.

Finally, the Imperial sits just a block south of the Pine Street shelter, which was foreclosed on more than six months ago. Attorneys for that building’s new owner are still trying to wrestle it away from Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. The city is already defending itself against a lawsuit in which MATFH accused it of helping to orchestrate the foreclosure, so the mayor isn’t likely to want the city to be cast – again – as indifferent toward very poor people by allowing the Imperial’s residents to be put on the street.

But money to keep any of PRI’s properties afloat has to come from somewhere, and the bottom of the city’s and state’s budget barrels might have already been scraped. Measures that were unthinkable just a few years ago have had to be taken in plenty of other instances, so things could definitely go either way.